Well, Malcolm X comes to mind, but it is very rare, and obviously,
not in a business presentation.
There are, well, most presentations have no social consequences at all.
Why are people so afraid?
So, about 40% of people say they are afraid of public speaking, but actually,
if you ask professional psychologists,
they will tell you everybody is afraid of public speaking.
Seriously.
Everyone.
They've actually devised something called a Trier social stress test.
Named after the Trier University.
Not after Lars von Trier, a Danish film director who tortures his audiences.
So, in this stress test, what they ask you to do, they ask you to give
a five minutes presentation and they give only five minutes to prepare.
And in the beginning of that presentation, they take away your notes.
And then, of course, they measure your blood, your saliva, stuff like that.
They measure your stress response.
And this is a pretty common social stress test, and they say everybody
sort of responds with a stress reaction to this particular social situation.
So, 100% of people actually do fear public speaking.
Question is to what extent?
And even without taking that Trier social stress test,
you can tell to what extent for you.
There's a psychometric instrument called Personal Report of
Public Speaking Anxiety, PRPSA.
It's abbreviated. And the link is down below.
And I actually encourage you to take it.
It's really rather short.
It's like 34 questions or something.
And, if you're score is below 98, well it means that your social stress anxiety,
your public speaking anxiety, is low, so
you may want to not to worry too much about this bit.
If you're somewhere in between 98 and 131,
then you're normal, in fact.
And if you're higher that 131,
well bad luck, you're having a severe stress reactions.
Some might even call it a phobic reaction.
And the median number is 114.6.
So, my score is 68, which is lower than 98.
However, it is higher than 34.
So, even for me, with all the experience that I have, and
I teach public speaking and I speak in public, probably not every day,
but every other day perhaps, so even with my experience,
I still get sort of nervous, get jittery sometimes.
So don't worry.
It will never go away completely.
And I think it shouldn't.
However, if you exhibit a severe stress reaction, a reaction
some might call a phobia, glossophobia, I think, is the technical term,
I think the video course is not going to help.
I think you need to see a doctor, a psychotherapist, or
maybe even a psychiatrist.
Psychiatrists have drugs, psychotherapists have something
which works really well for those kinds of problems.
I think they've almost nailed it.
It is called exposure therapy, and
I encourage you to read a Wikipedia page if you are interested.
It works by gradual exposure to this stimulus you are having a reaction to.
For example, if you have a fear of snakes, they show you a black and
white photograph of a snake.
You're not afraid.
And then, they sort of move forward.
They show you a colored photograph, then you see a snake behind a thick glass,
then they give you a rubber snake to play with.
Pretty soon, you are playing with a live, non-poisonous snake,
and it's totally okay and gone.
And the same works with public speaking.
You just expose yourself gradually to the stimulus and
observe where this stress reaction begins.
If you have a milder version of the same problem,
if you have like a fright or fear, you might want to try it yourself.
There's something called VRCBT,
cognitive behavioral therapy with exposure to virtual reality.
I'm tempted to say that it's a brand new thing, but it's actually pretty old.
It's like ten years old or something.
And huge amount of companies are working on those kinds of things,
including, for example, Samsung, a very large and respected organization.
So, I encourage you to check out those links.
Some of those applications are quite expensive, they require expensive
hardware, but some of them are quite cheap and they work with Google Cardboard.
So, I encourage you to try.
I actually try them.
It's pretty great.
They let you customize the amount of people in the audience,
they let you program their reactions to whatever it is you're saying.
They have no clue what you're saying,
which I think is also pretty great, but I think at the moment,
there are all sorts of people trying to solve that particular problem,
trying to actually make them understand what it is that you're saying.
And maybe, this is the future of rehearsals.
And maybe, this is the future of public speaking.